State to seek death in Brown's slayings

Defense says tape shows confession by another man

Prosecutors on Friday announced their intention to seek the death penalty for the two men charged in the 1993 Brown's Chicken & Pasta slayings, even as an attorney for one of the defendants said he has obtained a videotaped statement of someone else confessing to the crime.

The suspects, James Degorski, 30, and Juan Luna, 28, stood silently with their lawyers before Judge Vincent Gaughan at a hearing Friday. The two are charged with killing seven people at the Palatine restaurant.

Members of the victims' families said they were pleased by the state's decision. Diane Mennes, sister-in-law of victim Thomas Mennes, said she believes the execution of Degorski and Luna is the only way justice can be served.

"I can't see them sitting in jail and doing their thing and going into the jail yard twice a day," she said. "All the victims are no longer with us."

Meanwhile, Luna's attorney, Clarence Burch, said a videotaped confession of another man questioned in the case years ago is included on computer discs turned over by the state Friday that contained nearly 90,000 pages of discovery documents.

"This false claim was thoroughly investigated and discounted," said John Gorman, spokesman for the state's attorney's office.

A law-enforcement official familiar with the confession said the man who gave the statement was one of two questioned in 1998--both admitted being in the restaurant the night that five of its employees and two owners were slain. The men were not considered reliable, the official said.

"They would [confess] to anything and everything," the law-enforcement official said.

Investigators dismissed the men as suspects when their DNA did not match the sample taken from saliva on a chicken dinner left at the crime scene.

That evidence led to the charges against Degorski and Luna, accused of shooting the victims on Jan. 8, 1993.

The case remained a mystery for nine years until two women whom Degorski and Luna allegedly confided in came forward, authorities said. Luna's DNA allegedly matched the partially eaten meal, authorities said.

The name of one of the women, Anne Lockett, surfaced again in Friday's hearing. Burch told the judge he has unsuccessfully subpoenaed records of Forest Hospital in Des Plaines, where Lockett was a patient at the time of the Brown's slayings.

After the hearing, Burch said Lockett allegedly took a phone call there from Degorski on the night of the killings.